Training Method
by mimma
Summary: The brightest of all the colours. Kise's Perfect Copy does not come easily.


**Training; Method**

Aominechi is the first, and in some ways, the easiest. Kise has always held Aominechi's basketball near and dear, and there are the echoes of his style in Kise's anyway, the relentless all-consuming pressure, the grace of the scoring, the tit-for-fucking-tat. There's only a little way to go from that to Aominechi's unstoppable motion, to the way the ball seems to stay glued to his hand, like he could reach out his hand and it would come when called, caressing at his fingers. Kise could imagine Aominechi petting a basketball like a dog, giving it a pet name and having it adore him.

Kise finds he remembers Aominechi's special pass and movement drills with embarrassing clarity, too much time spent watching their ace when he should have been drilling himself, two balls, three, up and down the court, all moving in different directions, all kept in play by those marvelous hands, that incredible talent. Aominechi even _trains_ cooler than everyone else. Kise remembers Momochi and her sharp eyes always on Aominechi, ready to scoop a ball out of his reach, to throw in another for his improvement. Basketball is a language that Aominechi speaks like he's been born to it, and Momochi had learned enough of the shape of it to write it herself, and speak it to him.

Basketball is the language it's easiest to understand Aominechi in.

It's simple enough to unleash Aominechi against his sempai, alone on the court against them; be just that much faster, better, stronger. Love the ball that much more. Adore the sensation of whipping past someone on the court enough to extend the sweetness of blowing past them, dribbling that much longer and doubling back, and doubling forward. Be so utterly, unshakably certain that the ball will go in that you can shoot any way you please, moving like it's an extension of yourself. Aominechi against anyone else is easy.

But Aominechi against Aominechi is not going to be enough.

.0.

For two unbearable days, Kise terrorizes his sempai with a pair of non-prescription glasses, taping his fingers and carrying, respectively, a computer keyboard and a Hello Kitty plushie, which is the closest he's willing to get to a girl's day doll. He has his pride, after all. He has to stop after the basketball team as a whole sit him down and explain to him that method training or not, if he continues _they will murder him_. Kise doesn't have the heart to tell them about the rickshaw, or the guts to bring it up.

It isn't a total loss: Kise has a test on one of those days, and does irritatingly well. The palpitations he induces in Kaijou's female population start a megane-trend that lasts all of a month, which is pretty funny from Kise's point of view. Midorimachi _could_ be popular, if only he could be. He even spends about an hour plinking out nursery songs in the music room from memory, until Sempai wanders in, stares at him flatly, and picks up a guitar to pluck out the _actual_ rhythm of those songs, and they play Neko Funjatta in rounds for thirty of those minutes, until Sempai gets bored and tells Kise off for posing.

But the meat of Midorimachi's play is his shooting practice, standing there for hours not talking to anyone, not stopping, just scoring constantly, endlessly, as the muscles in his arms bulge and burn. Kise mixes it up, of course- just shooting is _so boring_, so ridiculously boring, just right for Midorimachi, who is _so so boring_- but nevertheless the sempai all notice, and pause to stroll over to Kise and the entire half court he's marked out for his practice. When they're there, they stare, and, unable to find anything to say, leave after a few minutes, back to their own practice.

"Such an unsociable special training," is Kobori-sempai's opinion, after a week of this, when Kise almost has it down- the perfect, unstoppable form, the attention-grabbing arc. His arms are also starting to feel less like wet noodles, which is nice. It's easy to lose focus, though, and Kise can't count on being able to unleash it as perfectly as Midorimachi does.

They're right, of course, but also not really. Kise cannot count the practices with Midorimachi at one side of the gym, the familiar swish and thunk of his scoring, keeping discordant time to their drills. He still remembers their favourite, opponent-crushing game-ender, Midorimachi's three-point buzzer beater, appallingly reliable, unable to resist watching the whole of the fall, gathering speed. Midorimachi is good at defense, yes, but best at the part of the game that doesn't involve anyone else, that can be done for endless hours alone without anyone to play with. Kise may not understand Midorimachi, but he will never hate him; if Aominechi is their ace, their general, their unstoppable scorer, then Midorimachi was their bishop, an unshakable foundation of their attack, and able to change the flow in one decisive move.

Ha, Shogi terms. Akashi is on his way already.

.0.

Kise considers the snack rack at the local combini for a whole ten minutes before he decides against it. He _cannot_ afford to blow up, and eating on Murasakibarachi's scale will wipe out his wallet. Plus, his fangirls will be sad if he can't eat their snacks anymore. He can't disappoint their sweet little faces.

Kise takes to standing on ledges and benches, perching himself higher and higher and staring down on their heads. Height, yes, but Murasakibarachi is so much more than just height. He looks down at the captain doing stretches and thinks, _give up. Give up now. It's useless. You'll never defeat me. Your talent was not enough. Love will get you nowhere. Dedication has no reward. All your courage is just stupidity_.

Actually, Kise doesn't know how Murasakibarachi can take it. He wants to curl up and die, starting to hate every one of their intense, eager expressions, and hating the sound of the ball. If he kept it up long enough he would feel nothing but ash. Maybe that's why Murasakibarachi doesn't leave the hoop any more. Of them all, their center might have been the one who fit them the least. Kise doesn't know where Murasakibarachi kept that boiling intensity, and has never had to face Murasakibarachi at his best.

But Kise won't lose when it comes to ability, to perfect timing, to prodigious effort. Here's what he understands about Murasakibarachi, at least; he hates to lose as much as any of them. More, maybe. Just maybe.

Kise _really_ hates losing.

.0.

Akashi has never gone so far as to say this, but Kise can guess why Haizaki was made to leave after a year of tolerating all his excesses: not for his violence, not for his attitude, not for anything as petty as sentiment or their pure, disdainful dislike. There is only one reason, and it is that Akashi must have chosen Kise, even then, chosen Kise's talent over Haizaki's viciousness. Kise can wonder then and now what Akashi saw in him, what heights their captain expects him to achieve. Kasamatsu is Kise's captain now, but Akashi will always be _their_ captain.

Kise might not have Akashi's eyes, but it's only an extrapolation of what he already does, surely, seeing how the limbs move and what effect it produces. He just needs to think about how to stymie instead of copy, and his abilities, at least, won't lose to Akashi's. But there's something more to Akashi than that. So Kise tries to think like Akashi. The shogi, yes. The shogi, sure. He sucks at it. It's sort of unavoidable, and Kise really should stick to basketball, after the long shattering humiliation of being beaten by anyone he can beg to give him a game. Maybe copying can be used the same way drops are supposed to be, turning your opponent's pieces against themselves. Maybe. Kise doesn't really get it.

Teikou's doctrine is victory, and victor's justice, and victor's rights. Kurokochi once taught Kise that victory was everything, and Akashi has taught Kise this same thing with every action he's ever taken, every time they've walked out of a stadium with all the world at their feet, every aspect of his life that Kise can discover. How did Midorimachi do it, striving against Akashi at every chance he got? Kise usually tries to avoid _thinking_ about Akashi, out of the lingering fear that their captain will see it on his face, hear it in his voice, read it in his mind. Akashi could have opened them all up and stripped them bare, if he cared to. Even in Kyoto, it feels like they won't escape his eyes.

And yet.

Kise has never doubted Akashi before, not really. But neither did he reconcile in his head that he did not believe he could beat Aominechi, nor that anyone could beat him, until Kurokochi pointed out Kise's flaws for Kagamichi's edification, until Kise got so close to blasting past Aominechi sometimes he still tastes it on his skin. Sometimes it feels like Akashi has even planned ahead for this eventuality, all the eventualities, and none of them the possibility of his loss.

Akashi enjoys being surprised by the upper bounds of their potential, as if he isn't a kid like them, because he isn't a kid like them. Kise is going to have to see how much he can surprise their captain now.

.0.

Kise leaves Kurokochi for last, or something like it. You can't replicate misdirection on the court. Kise is their ace, their brightest and their best and their scorer, it's impossible to miss him. Kise cannot understand Kurokochi and not being the center of attention. Surely it's not something you can control, if someone will look at you or not. People have always flocked around Kise, and always will. He's not sure that it's actually anything that he does.

What was that Kurokochi had said to him once, about being the shadow to his light? It's one of Akashi's summations of what they are, a habit Midorima picked up. He gets like that sometimes, but it's almost a little too pat. Kise works backwards, instead.

Kise practices his passes and plays like Kurokochi does, the tap pass, and only the tap pass. There's the ignite pass, but Kise has horrible memories of having it burn nearly all the skin off his palms, and practicing for hours and entire fucking weeks before he could catch it. Aominechi has hands like catcher's mitts when it comes to basketballs, though, which Kise maintains was half their compatibility. Kise tries to explain about the ignite pass to his sempai, but this also involves explaining that Kurokochi can punch out anyone up to three times his size, which involves going into the explanation that Kurokochi has the filthiest temper out of nearly all of them, and to a man they refuse to believe him. Kise is used to this, though. No one ever believes anything about Kurokochi until they do. He should know.

Misdirection isn't precisely what he's setting out to do, he sees. Once the opposing players know that Kise isn't going to score anyway, they focus their attention elsewhere. But they have everywhere to look now, and Kise has everywhere to pass. And Kise is _good_ at passing. Outside the scuffle that accompanies the ball, Kise has all the game at his fingertips. He has to know his team intimately. Who will take the three-pointer right then, and who will need a few more seconds to get into position before he'll shoot, and is he then clear enough for Kise to attempt that pass right this moment? Kise always has to be in the right places at the right times- or make his own right times, winding the game faster and faster around himself, tight and precise. If they forget the others to focus on Kise's pass routes, they're caught in the opposite trap- the sempai slip the ball past them in every unguarded moment. Kurokochi might already be working towards this. Playing against Kaijou's second-string isn't the same as even the first-string of another nationals team, of course, and won't be the same as facing Seirin again, as squaring up against the rest who share Kise's title. Still, it's enough for Kise to work on for now.

It's dangerous, after all, to lose sight of where Kurokochi is.

.0.

Kise is done with all his practices for a moment, and settles himself near the bench to do his stretches, thinking of nothing in particular but that mix of exhaustion and exhilaration that follows a really good practice. He watches them all move and struggle and suffer, and for a moment he's fourteen again, and new to all of this, and unsure of everything except that there's nothing he wants more in the world right now than this. Sometimes he misses Teikou. Not the games, precisely, not the bad attitude that ate him up, but Teikou. Kurokochi or Aominechi on the roof and Murasakibarachi eating in class. Going home with Midorimachi. Momochi and Akashi ready to catch all his mistakes, and always, always right.

Sometimes it feels like he's never going to reach the Generation of Miracles. It's never been _his_ nickname, not really. They were miracles before he came along. Kise has never joked about being the weakest of them without believing it. Out here in Kanagawa, in the run-up to the Winter Cup, they've never seemed so far away, all of them. Every time he tries to be them, he produces only a pale shadow, and maybe it's too much for him. But what would be the point of giving up? Kaijou is counting on him, and they're all waiting for each other, at the Winter Cup.

And then someone says, "Where's Kise?"

"He was just- no, he isn't…"

"Je(l)k, did he (r)eave?"

"Did you see him?"

"Man, he was here, right?"

Kise struggles to keep from laughing. "Here," he says, right in the thick of them, to a chorus of sharply cut-off curses.

"Kise-!"

"Kise, you bas-"

"What the hell are you doing there?"

"Are you trying to give us heart attacks?"

"I've been here all along," Kise says, laughs, and maybe, just maybe, is closer to them than he thinks.

Your voice was the soundtrack of my summer.


End file.
